In a conventional method of producing a flip-chip light emitting diode element, a plurality of epitaxial layers are deposited on a sapphire substrate to produce an epitaxial wafer. On the epitaxial wafer, a plurality of light emitting diode elements are produced. The epitaxial wafer is then diced into dice. The element dice is connected to a fixing plate by connecting at least one electrode of the element dice to at least one pad of the fixing plate.
A thin-GaN light emitting diode element has replaced the flip-chip light emitting diode element, and in comparison to the flip-chip light emitting diode element, thin-GaN light emitting diode element has advantages of a low heat resistance, uniform current in n-type layer and p-type layer, and lower cost. For the thin-GaN light emitting diode element, the epitaxial wafer is directly bonded to a conductive carrier substrate. Then, a laser lift-off process is used to remove the sapphire substrate and leave the active region of the light emitting diode element. However, the laser lift-off method has the disadvantages of requiring expensive equipment and causing processing damage to the light emitting diode elements.
Conventional chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technology has been used instead of laser lift-off technology, which does not require laser equipment and does not cause similar resulting damage. However, when applying the conventional CMP technology, if the plane being polished is too large, the variation in the thickness of the plane is too great to result in damaging a useful and efficient structure. Therefore, mass production of semiconductor devices cannot be made while maintaining the required production standards.
Therefore, known methods of manufacturing thin semiconductor structures result in undesirable damage and production variations. Accordingly, there is a need for a method of producing thin gallium-nitride (GaN)-based semiconductor structures that overcomes the shortcomings of known methods.